Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past

Full issue

2025-03-17

Stories and memories from the forest: an interview with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

Pablo de Castro Albernaz — 2024-12-01

Davi Kopenawa is a shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami, the largest indigenous population of recent contact and inhabitant of a territory of more than nine million hectares located in the states of Amazonas and Roraima, Brazil. President of the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY), Kopenawa is known internationally as one of the most important voices in defence of the Amazon. He is the author of the books A queda do Céu: palavras de um xamã Yanomami and, more recently, O Espírito da Floresta, in which he tells his life story and his struggle against illegal mining and in defence of his territory and his people from the perspective of Yanomami cosmology.

On 30 January 2023, newly inaugurated president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva published Decree No. 11.405, determining federal measures to deal with the public health emergency and to combat illegal mining. This decree aims to respond to the serious health crisis in which the Yanomami found themselves after four years of federal management by former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under investigation by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and has been indicted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for allegedly committing genocide against the Yanomami.

In March 2024, President Lula signed a Provisional Measure that released an extraordinary credit of 1 billion reais for actions linked to the urgent and structuring work plan in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, aimed at assisting the Yanomami people and the disintrusion of mining. These actions are aimed at maintaining the presence of federal agencies in the region, combating illegal mining, distributing food baskets and tools, as well as carrying out structuring actions aimed at food security, social protection, environmental monitoring and indigenous school education.

This interview was carried out on a night in March 2024, when I received Davi at my home in Boa Vista, Roraima, weeks after his participation in the carnival parade of the Salgueiro Samba School, which had the Yanomami people as its theme. The aim of the interview is to enable more people to get to know Kopenawa's life story and political struggle. In it, Davi discusses the story of his childhood and his perspective on the arrival of the whites in his territory, his realisation of who the invaders are and the consequences of contact with non-indigenous society. He also emphasises the importance of memory for the Yanomami, his role as a cultural translator and holder of shamanic knowledge, as well as talking about current challenges and his role as a representative of his people.

Joint Acquisition and Shared Custody in Art Museums: The Case of the National Gallery of Canada

Jessica Minier — 2025-03-17

In the age of networks, museums are increasingly turning to collaborative practices and partnerships. While often at work in exhibition projects, collaboration can also infiltrate acquisition projects and disrupt traditional collecting practices. This article examines two types of collaborative musealization: joint acquisition and shared stewardship. While joint acquisition refers to the shared ownership of a work by several (non-)museum institutions, shared stewardship refers to a sharing of decision-making authority over a work in the collections, without transfer of ownership. The first part of this article sets out the theoretical underpinnings of these two concepts, then considers them through the case study of the National Gallery of Canada. Its institutional history will be examined to highlight its propensity for collaboration and partnerships, paving the way for renewed collaborative practices.

From ‘Anízia Maria’ Indigenous Museum to Museum of the Indigenous Peoples of Piauí: Collaborative Museological Processes, Counter-Narratives and Political Protagonism of the Tabajara and Tapuio – Itamaraty/PI

Anna Bottesi — 2025-03-17

On August 30, 2023, the Museum of Indigenous Peoples of Piauí (MUPI) was inaugurated in the community of Nazaré (municipality of Lagoa de São Francisco-PI). The narratives developed by municipal and state media portray the event as the success of an initiative promoted by state institutions aiming to support the political demands of Indigenous people. In reality, MUPI is the result of a set of more complex and articulated processes at local, state, and national levels, with the Tabajara and Tapuio-Itamaraty peoples—residents of the Nazaré community—as its protagonists and the Indigenous Museum “Anízia Maria” as the privileged instrument for recognizing silenced memories and identities. This article examines key stages of this trajectory from 2016 to the present, focusing on the most significant events related to the process of identity and political strengthening of the Tabajara and Tapuio peoples, which contributed to the creation of MUPI.

Crossroads and Itineraries of the Multivocal Writing of Exhibitions at the National Historical Museum (Brazil): In Favour of What and/or Whom?

Julia Nolasco de Moraes — 2024-12-01

This article discusses the participation of historically invisible or subalternized social segments in museums. The National Historical Museum in Brazil and, more specifically, the exhibitions Decolonial Brazil: Other Histories, 10 Objects: Other Narratives and Îandé: Here We Were, Here We Are, are observed as the study and analysis scenario. The exhibition statements are investigated as the fruit of processes of institutional experimentation that seek to break with the absolute and celebratory perspective of National History. Firstly, it presents the problem of social participation in the context of museums based on the transformations of their role over time. The question is: for what and/or for whom are the processes of social participation in museums mobilized? Subsequently, it seeks to summarize the trajectory of the National Historical Museum, which gave rise to movements to revise and reformulate institutional narratives that led to the production of the three exhibitions under analysis. Finally, we look at the three exhibition statements mentioned.

The Women’s Football Collection at Grêmio Museum – Hermínio Bittencourt (Porto Alegre, RS): When Musealization Provides Collaborative Experiences

Sibelle Barbosa da Silva — 2024-12-01

In Brazil, soccer is not only a sporting practice but also a sociocultural phenomenon. Since the first half of the 20th century, a significant number of clubs have had trophy rooms, memorials, and museums dedicated to presenting celebratory narratives, primarily focused on men’s soccer. However, the formation of club collections and archives has not included a range of perspectives on the clubs and their athletes, rendering women’s participation invisible. In this context, the article presents the musealization processes applied to the women’s soccer collection at the Grêmio Museum – Hermínio Bittencourt, located in Porto Alegre (RS), through a multidisciplinary effort that fostered new collaborative dynamics between the club and female athletes, former athletes, fans, and researchers associated with the institution, mediated by the museum. As a result, this collaborative process has contributed to raising awareness and highlighting the museum’s potential as a space and source for research, dialogue, and social engagement.

“My Grandmother’s House”. A Collaborative Exhibition on the History of Whales in Atouguia da Baleia

Nina Vieira — 2024-12-01

In Atouguia da Baleia, a former medieval port now 5 km from the sea, cetacean bones can be found with intriguing regularity in grandmothers’ houses. The exhibition “A Baleia em Atouguia” rescued stories of the people of Peniche, and specifically the town of Atouguia, to the whale and whaling. The exhibition was inaugurated in March 2023 at CIAB - Interpretive Center of Atouguia da Baleia (part of the Museum Network of the Municipality of Peniche), curated by the Municipality and CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH), with scientific support from the ERC 4-OCEANS. Participatory museum strategies and collaborative and interdisciplinary techniques were applied in a process that called on the community to act as a producer of knowledge and as an inventory-taker, contributing to more effective management of local heritage, fostering the recovery of collective memory and the safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage.

The Musealization of a Photographic Collection from the Parada Livre: Reflections on Shared Heritage Management

Anna Carolina Gelmini de Faria — 2025-03-17

Case study of the production of memories supported by photographs by the collective nuances (lowercase spelling of the name is a choice of the collective) – Group for Free Sexual Expression – a civil society organization that fights for the human and civil rights of the LGBT+ population. Since 2019, the bachelor’s degree in Museology and the Graduate Program in Museology and Heritage, both at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, have been working directly with nuances, utilizing Applied Museology as a means of dialogue with society. The excerpt is the records of the Paradas Livres considered testimonies of a history forgotten in the hegemonic narratives of the city of Porto Alegre, but which makes up a set of social struggles in Brazil. The work involved the realization of a memory circle, based on the methodology of oral history. Thus, it proposes an analysis of the methodological process, understanding musealization as a strategy for mobilizing collective consciousness.

Ättä Edemi Jödö: Memory and Music in an Inauguration Ritual of the Ye’kwana Round House

Pablo de Castro Albernaz — 2024-12-01

This article describes the Ye’kwana ritual of building their round house (ättä), which took place in 2016 in the community of Fuduwaadunnha, Yanomami Indigenous Land. The Ye’kwana ättä is built based on the memory and cosmology of this people and was first described by the German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg in his book “From Roraima to the Orinoco”, a landmark in German Americanism and museology in the Amazon. The Ye’kwana are a Carib-speaking people with an estimated population of 7,000 people who live in villages spread throughout their traditional territory in Venezuela and Brazil. Understanding hearing as a privileged sense for accessing knowledge and using different acoustic codes, the Ye’kwana build their houses by relating them to cosmology, sounds, memory, and verbal arts. To think about these questions, I use the concept of cosmosonics to illuminate the centrality of sonic aspects in the cosmology of these Caribbean people.

Memories and Shared Experiences. An Analysis of Exhibition Productions Made from Images and Everyday Objects

Luis Carlos Toro Tamayo — 2024-12-01

The analysis of exhibition experiences carried out by university students in Colombia, who understand the importance of safeguarding memories, allows us to assess how objects and photographs are effective in activating memories and how, through these materialities, we can understand practices, discourses, and experiences that bring us closer to the situational contexts of a society overwhelmed by different forms of violence. The results of this study will contribute to the construction of visual narratives and to the continued valuing of personal archives as an integral part of building the memories of a country striving for peace.

Collaborative Practices: Rethinking Narratives and Processes of Musealisation

Rita Juliana Soares Poloni — 2024-12-01

Museus e Etnicidade: o negro no pensamento museal

Carolina Gomes Nogueira — 2025-03-17

Review of Nila Rodrigues Barbosa, Museus e etnicidade: o negro no pensamento museal. Curitiba: Appris, 2018, 183 pp.

Antônio Bispo dos Santos: A Countercolonial Discourse from the Depth and Simplicity of the Philosophical Thought of Quilombola Cosmologies

Henry Rafael Vallejo Infante — 2024-12-01

Review of Antônio Bispo dos Santos, A terra dá, a terra quer, São Paulo: Ubu Editora/PISEAGRAMA, 2023, 112 pp.

Futuro Ancestral

Helena Thomassim Medeiros — 2025-03-17

Review of Ailton Krenak, Futuro ancestral, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2022, 122 pp.

Yanomami counter-history: a decolonial look in A queda do céu, by Davi Kopenawa

Eliana Delgado Gonzalez — 2025-03-17

Review of Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, A queda do céu, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015, 768 pp.